22:29 UTC (new) (history) 2015-03-23 Sagas of the Icelanders . . . . Alex Schroeder – The game ended with the players securing half the whale for Snorri's clan, one non-player character dead, a thirteen year old young man impressed, the low intensity fight with the Tindur clan continuing and new found friendship with the Halfdann clan. [en]

22:31 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2015-03-12 How To Create A Large Dungeon . . . . Alex Schroeder – Hah, I am not alone! The stairs never bothered me much. I just add them on both levels and the direction seems to work well for me. With six full levels, my laptop sometimes takes too long to switch levels. It annoys me sometimes. Specially if I have to switch jump many levels, for example. Some…[en]

08:40 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2015-03-10 Twenty Three Years . . . . Alex Schroeder – On Google+, I linked to this blog post and wrote: "Some people say, time flies and I think they mean that they remember events of the distant past as if they had happened only yesterday and then there are long stretches where they don't remember much. Luckily, I don't have this feeling of time…[en]

09:47 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2015-03-10 Fighting Wiki Spam . . . . Alex Schroeder – I think we can talk about two different kinds of attacks: # a long term infiltration under the radar # a massive attack on multiple levels Both attacks need to be stopped by fish-bowling the wiki: making it read-only. In order to detect long term infiltration, you need constant peer review. I…[en]

2015-03-10

15:43 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2008-10-29 YSlow . . . . Alex Schroeder – I was confused by all the stuff I had added. I commented the entires section again. I really want to make sure I understand what's going on. At the moment, my setup added two cache control headers and prevented Etags from working. What a mess. Before: {{{ alex@kallobombus:~$ curl -I…[en]

22:18 UTC (diff) (history) 2015-03-08 Jupiter Ascending . . . . Alex Schroeder – The action scenes were long and the involved a lot of woman-as-victim, the biology was crazy (speaking as a zoologist, here) — but the visual design was marvelous, the soundtrack worked for me, the sets, the costumes, the masks, all of it wonderful. I liked it! Tags: [en]

12:49 UTC (new) (history) 2015-03-02 RPG Blogs . . . . Alex Schroeder – So, with blog rolls decreasing in importance and a lot of the RPG talk having moved to Google+, what are the blogs people recommend?[en]

23:32 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2015-02-14 Lack of Internet Culture . . . . AlexDaniel – Stupidity is the problem. Indeed, think about all of the examples! Stupidity was involved in all of them. Lets just focus on making our kids, our friends, our society, but most importantly *ourselves smarter. Things will become so much better in a long run.[en]

18:28 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-04-03 Eich and Mozilla . . . . Alex Schroeder – Perhaps related? How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life. There's a difference between a Tweet, and donating $1000, but here's what I wrote in response to this NYT article by Jon Ronson, in a comment on this Google+ post: : I understand people pointing to a tweet and saying "this sucks" –…[en]

10:06 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2012-03-24 How Emacs Wiki Works . . . . Alex Schroeder – The section on poor community aptly describes what I feel towards Stackexchange and Wikipedia. But I still participate. Simple answers to stupid questions are still useful. I will learn or not, on my own terms. Not every question needs to be a learning experience. But poor community bites. :([en]

20:12 UTC (new) (history) 2014-12-08 FATE for classic D&D players . . . . AlexSchroeder – Today I posted a comment to a question on Google+ trying to give a concise explanation of FATE for old school D&D players. "From a classic D&D perspective, skills are just that. Aspects are what grant you a reroll or a +2 if you already rolled well. You need to spend a fate point to do…[en]

22:56 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-12-02 Fluidity in Rules and Setting . . . . Harald – I can confirm that even ShadowRun is capable of supporting genre drift. It is a kitchen-sink setting with future technology, magic, and the matrix as the three big focal points. In the SR campaign I ran two decades ago, we even had different players focus on different parts of the genre, including…[en]

21:50 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-11-05 Donations . . . . Alex Schroeder – I actually like the policy of allowing reasonable ads. After all, whenever I use free services, I provided with some service. I'd like the web to work without ads, but there are enough services I use which rely on ads. I mostly disagree with tracking, invasion of my privacy, animated ads, large…[en]

15:00 UTC (new) (history) 2014-11-05 Donations . . . . AlexSchroeder – Recently I made some $10 donations, and I'm planning on some more. * Mozilla * This American Life * Ad Block And I regularly donate about $10/month to the EFF, the FSF and the FSFE. Tags: [en]

15:33 UTC (new) (history) 2014-10-29 Skills . . . . AlexSchroeder – A recent discussion on Google+ prompted me to explain how I use skills: I usually don't use skills and backgrounds explicitly in my B/X game but rather I ask the player: do you think your character would know this? Is this something they have done in the past? If so, auto success and write it on…[en]

10:34 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-10-15 Con Games . . . . AlexSchroeder – Yes, practice sessions are definitely a good thing. In my case, I love running a few indie games that keep presenting the same characters and the same situations:Lady Blackbird, Darkening Skies, The Mountain Witch. These games make it particularly easy for me. I've run them before, they're great.…[en]

08:16 UTC (new) (history) 2014-10-15 Adventure Prep . . . . AlexSchroeder – All in all this took maybe an hour or two of scribbling and resulted in a three hour session. Not very efficient by my old standard (1h prep for a 4h game) but I guess I enjoy this sort of prep.[en]

06:31 UTC (new) (history) 2014-10-15 Con Games . . . . Alex Schroeder – Somebody was recently wondering about con games on Google+ in a private post and I left the following comment: * bring pre gens, have pictures of the characters or a strong, bold three word characterization which allows people to pick characters without reading the entire character sheet * start…[en]

12:27 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-09-03 Stone Giants . . . . AlexSchroeder – Ah, that would be his Lulu page where he says: "I have been a D&D hobbyist since 1980. In 2008 I was encouraged to make my own adventures available to the public. But after years of doing this, it is time to take a break. If and when gamers want more from me, future products might appear. To…[en]

08:13 UTC (new) (history) 2014-08-21 No Dice . . . . AlexSchroeder – Just recently, I looked over my reaction roll table and started thinking about adding some more words to help me improvise better.[en]

2014-08-16

09:37 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-08-14 Who to Follow . . . . Alex Schroeder – I don't. 😥 That's the other side of this coin. I still remember when I was a teenager and later, in my early twenties, I subscribed to various daily and weekly newspapers. And it was just so much to read! I was frustrated, and so I canceled many of my subscriptions. These days, the same is true for…[en]

07:43 UTC (new) (history) Comments on 2012-12-20 Monsters . . . . AlexSchroeder – In a fight, I imagine the shroom lord to jump from mushroom to mushroom like a magic hare, grow to the size of a rhino, manifest swirling colors, huge eyes with spiral patterns, ethereal hands growing from his back and caressing you as he attempts to grab your head and stick his long tongue through…[en]

12:57 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-07-28 OSR Top Blogs . . . . Alex Schroeder – Haha, yeah. Convention reports about conventions I did not go to are even less interesting than session I didn't play in. :) I do like three supplements focusing on spells, though: The Basic Illusionist by Nathan Irving, Theorems & Thaumaturgy by Gavin Norman, and his (not available for free)…[en]

14:56 UTC (new) (history) 2014-07-08 Character Names . . . . AlexSchroeder – For a while, my character generator used a name list based on German saints and an English list of saints. Later, I switched to a different list of names but now I feel that maybe I should have kept it. So, I'm posting it. 1664 items… I dunno, roll 1d1664? Or help me pad the list in order to get to…[en]

2014-07-07

18:31 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-06-20 Rewarding a Thing . . . . Adrian – I am going to respond to only one thing, your question about a sandbox. The way I see it (and this is just one point of view), in a sandbox game, the players are essentially "exploring" an unknown map. In some cases this is the literal act of mapping out unrevealed hexes on a map. In other cases…[en]

16:59 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-07-03 Publishing a Setting . . . . AlexSchroeder – I agree that there is a need for new settings, somewhere. But from my perspective, I need a new setting very rarely indeed. How often do you start new campaigns? I've run several campaigns in three different settings over eight years, now. At first, I had no real setting but just kept expanding my…[en]

14:08 UTC (new) (history) Comments on 2014-06-30 Mapping . . . . JDJarvis – I think a lot of playersDMs worry too much about the exact layout. A brief shorthand description works fine if the players get it and it doesn't cause them to blunder into situations or tactics more vivid description would eliminate. The "you are here" flashcard sketch saves a lot of time and…[en]

16:44 UTC (new) (history) 2014-06-29 Village Adventure . . . . AlexSchroeder – I don't think this village or city needs a map, factions, quarters, and so on. If you start down that road you'll have material for ten sessions! This can be a good thing, or it can be detraction from what the players actually want. If they're free to choose, they might just leave.[en]

14:49 UTC (new) (history) 2014-06-24 Emacs and Dice . . . . AlexSchroeder – If I roll one of the five standard gaming dice (d4, d6,d8, d10,d12) and you also roll one of those, what are my chances of rolling higher, equal or lower than you, for each possible combination of dice.﻿[de, en]

20:35 UTC (new) (history) 2014-06-20 Rewarding a Thing . . . . AlexSchroeder – Doing a thing should not be rewarded. What I want is players doing things in order to get a reward, in other words, they are doing something else in order to get a reward. The action and the reward should be orthogonal.[en]

09:51 UTC (new) (history) 2014-06-17 Isotope . . . . AlexSchroeder – We spent half an hour after the game talking about it, comparing it to Apocalypse World (which was deemed longer and harder to get into for little benefit), Lady Blackbird (which was deemed to promise better character development via keys and locked tags) and Traveller (which was deemed to similar…[en]

06:07 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2014-05-22 Stat Blocks . . . . AlexSchroeder – Same here, sometimes I'll have extra stuff happen on a natural 20. If monsters have a breath attack they don't use every round, I also like to give the chance for them to use it (since no d20 is rolled). I like 50% or 1–3/6 better than "every 1d4 rounds". In your stat block the "Atk" label is the…[en]

2014-05-26

07:06 UTC (diff) (history) Comments on 2013-07-02 Initiative . . . . AlexSchroeder – Recently Robert Fisher had posted a video talking about weapon length to Google+. My first comment was this: «Part of the problem is that characters survive hit point loss without adverse effect. That's why a "initiative using weapon length in the first round" isn't a great rule for D&D.﻿»…[en]

2014-05-22

08:50 UTC (new) (history) 2014-05-22 Stat Blocks . . . . AlexSchroeder – Perhaps if more people posted their favorite monster stat notation and argued for their differences, we could start building said "rough consensus".[en]